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W hen she speaks about the fascination people have
with flowers, noting that this attraction dates back
to the Neanderthals who placed them in their
graves, Marjorie Simon grows animated. “I think we’re hard-
wired for flowers,” she says, then wonders aloud if that is
putting it too strongly. Whatever the origin of this fervor,
she acknowledges a deep personal connection to flowers;
“and if I feel that kind of passion,” she states with conviction,
“it might as well be in my work.”
Over the past ten or so years Simon has explored floral
and botanical imagery in her jewelry, bringing a fresh
perspective to a rich tradition. She has employed a wonderfully
diverse variety of techniques and mediums, from vitreous
enamel to manipulated photographs, to fulfill her inventive
visions. The inspiration for this work derives from equally
varied sources, both historical and of the moment.
Back in 1995, Simon visited the British Museum in London
where she came across six-thousand-year-old Egyptian
necklaces with paste glass fruit and flower elements. Struck by
how fresh and alive the pieces were, she eventually drew on
this experience to create her own Egyptian-inspired flower
necklaces. One neckpiece from 1999 features overlaid floral
and leaf shapes made from vitreous enamel on copper and
various semiprecious stones. Another necklace, from 2000,
combines twenty-two karat bimetal, fourteen karat gold and
fine silver with amethyst, peridot and glass beads.
Simon turned to floral imagery again in the wake of the
attacks of September 11, 2001. Living in Highland Park, New
Jersey, at the time, she recalls pacing her studio like so many of
her peers, not knowing what to do. When she did get back to
work, she made a series of flower brooches from cast sterling
silver and pearls, the latter chosen for their suggestion of tears.
Going to shows and speaking with fellow jewelers the next year,
Simon discovered that many artists had had a similar impulse
to create flower ornaments as a means to deal with the grief.
A sunflower brooch from 2003 is bold in its design. The
rows of yellow and white petals that form a halo around the
center are vitreous enamel on die-formed copper while the
sunflower seeds consist of a cluster of Murano glass beads.
Her signature Fluffy Shades of Red necklace from the same
year is a delightful arrangement of small four-petaled enamel-
on-copper flowers attached to sterling silver rings (one of
these necklaces was recently acquired by the Newark Museum).
Simon uses the term “vitreous enamel” to make it clear
that the material is glass, not a pigment in resin, which she has
also worked with, but less frequently. The glass enamel offers
different textures and wonderfully luminous qualities; and its
surface can be rendered shiny or matte (the latter achieved
The Future of the Floral
MarjorieSimon
Carl Little
WILLIAM MORRIS BROOCH: ORANGE PEONY, in process. The flower is based on William Morris Wallpaper. Photograph by MarjorieSimon. Opposite page, top: Completed WILLIAM MORRIS BROOCH: ORANGE PEONY of vitreous enamel on embossed copper,sterling silver, approximately 5.1 x 7.6 centimeters, 2007. Opposite page, bottom: WILLIAM MORRIS: YELLOW PEONY BROOCH ofvitreous enamel on embossed copper, sterling silver, approximately 5.1 x 7.6 centimeters, 2007. Photographs by RobertDiamante.
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with a weak solution of hydrochloric acid). It also is a risky
medium: overfiring, as Simon knows full well, can easily
destroy the piece in progress.
The metalsmith loves adding a skin of glass to a metal
form by sifting enamel and firing it in the kiln. She frequently
combines torch and kiln firing for enamels, deliberately
burning out areas to keep the work looking, in her words,
“raw and gestural.” She employs basic metalsmithing
techniques, among them, scoring and die-forming, stretching
and compressing.
A red zinnia brooch from 2004 exemplifies Simon’s
daring, both in its expressive design and its vivid coloration.
Her palette tends to be vibrant, with the orange/tangerine
to deep red range among her favorites. She is fond of the
Thompson enamel colors, including a cornflower blue she
has used on several occasions. “I really go with what I would
like to wear,” she admits.
In 2007, Simon produced a series of brooches based on
William Morris wallpaper motifs. These floral and botanical
designs are abstracted to the point where their origin may
not be immediately evident. The expressive and tactile lines
that emerge from these translucent pins are the result of
embossing the copper underpinning then using an alundum
stone or diamond abrasive to remove any enamel that is on
the raised part. The copper then oxidizes to black, further
accentuating the line.
While Simon acknowledges that her choice of Morris
carries an intellectual and historical overlay, she is primarily
focused on the imagery. As with each new body of work, she
seeks to improve her technical skills even as she refines her
themes. “I proudly bear the mantle of the fine craft artist,”
she has written, “because the construction of each piece
is as important to me as the idea behind it.” She enjoys the
additional challenge of bringing the ornament to the body,
employing innovative pin stems, ear wires and clasps.
Since moving to Philadelphia from New Jersey nearly two
years ago, Simon finds her flowers not in her own garden, but
at the city markets. For a new group of floral pieces, she has
been taking photographs of these purchased peonies, daisies,
zinnias, and tulips and then manipulating them on a computer
and on a color photocopier. “It’s pretty low-tech,” she notes,
but the results are edgy and abstract—and visually engaging.
For one recent piece, a close-up photograph of a blue
peony was manipulated in size and color on the photocopier
until it became something quite celestial—and not
immediately recognizable. Simon is not interested in
representation, but rather in extracting the essence of floral
features through various stylizations. These intriguing images
Above: FIELD OF FLOWERS BROOCH, inprocess. The piece was created for the2007 show Process: Documented, atAaron Faber Gallery. Photographs byMarjorie Simon. Completed FIELD OFFLOWERS BROOCH of vitreous enamelon copper, sterling silver, 6.0 centimetersdiameter, 2007. Photograph by RalphGabriner.
are accented with pearls and torch-fired enamel elements,
while the backings are cut from polyester (acetate).
The shapes of these pieces were inspired by Victorian
jewelry—a purposeful appropriation, Simon says, with a new
post-modern feel provided by the technology of photocopier
and digital camera. The Victorian influence also appears
in her latest brooches inspired by keyhole escutcheons and
drawer pulls. In one pin, the statue of David is visible
through a stylized aperture, a kind of peephole view—and his
backside is revealed when the pin is turned over. The enamel
is granular, a result of underfiring.
In an appreciation written in 2003, jeweler Lisa Gralnick
called her former student’s floral ornaments “lovingly
democratic in their ability to soothe, comfort and bridge
across generations and cultures.” Tracing Simon’s craft
journey helps explain how she developed this special sensibility
—and the out of the ordinary stature she enjoys in the
world of jewelry.
Born Marjorie Lipshutz in Philadelphia in 1945, Simon
made her first jewelry at summer camp; indeed, she was
always making things from an early age, whether it was
knitting, sewing, building model cars—or writing. The
catalog for Botanicals, her 2000 exhibition at the Objects
of Desire Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, is dedicated to
Miss Shirley Betts, Simon’s homeroom teacher and seventh
grade English teacher at Ardmore Junior High School in
Philadelphia—“the first person,” Simon recalls, “who really
encouraged me to write.”
The catalog also pays tribute to her professor, Philip
Goldberg, who taught Simon psychology at Connecticut
College and served as a mentor, sparking her intellectual
curiosity. If Betts and Goldberg did not lead her to jewelry, the
imprint of their positive influence manifests itself in the
dedication and sharp intellect their student brings to her craft.
Simon went on to graduate school at Bryn Mawr where
she received her master’s degree, writing her thesis on Freud’s
The Future of the Illusion. She moved to Boston in 1968 to
teach sociology at Cardinal Cushing College, a small Catholic
women’s school.
Around this time, the earlier creative drive returned;
Simon missed working with her hands. In 1971 she took her
first class in jewelry, at the Cambridge Center for Adult
Education, and started making beaded and hammered wire
jewelry. She and her anthropologist husband, Kevan Simon,
would set up shop in Harvard Square using a board with
glued felt squares and cup hooks for hanging earrings. They
sold jewelry until they had made enough money for dinner.
“That was the time,” Simon remembers with a smile.
Moving to Highland Park, New Jersey, in 1976, Simon
soon organized a work space in the basement of her house,
working on her jewelry while raising her children, Ya’akov
and Eli. In 1979 she was accepted to the Morristown Craft
Market; in 1983, she received a fellowship grant from the New
Jersey State Council on the Arts.
This grant led to Simon’s first major work, an elaborate
neckpiece titled Honoring Margaret Mead. It was a way, she
says, of bringing together two parts of her life, social science
and jewelry. The necklace incorporated charms, a locket and
other elements that referenced the anthropologist’s life and
work. Three repoussé figures represented infancy, adolescence
and maternity, the phases of a woman’s life that Mead had
studied in Samoa and New Guinea. “She was a hero to me,”
Simon states; “This was a way of paying her back.”
To make the Mead piece, Simon drew on a workshop in
textile techniques for metalsmiths that she had taken with Mary
Lee Hu at the Parsons School of Design. She also visited the
Michael C. Rockefeller wing at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art where she made drawings of Pacific Islands weaving patterns.
Simon knew she needed more fabrication skills to advance
her craft, but with small children to tend to, being a full-time
student was not an option. Instead, she took community-
based courses at Parsons and the 92nd Street Y’s Art Center in
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SUNFLOWER WITH BLOSSOMS BROOCH, in process, also created for Process: Documented, at Aaron Faber Gallery in 2007. Photographby Marjorie Simon. COMPLETED BROOCH of torch-fired enamel on copper, sterling silver, 7.6 centimeters diameter, 2007. Photograph byRalph Gabriner.
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She studied with Gail Saunders at Parsons and Enid Kaplan
and Rebekah Laskin at the Y (the Art Center celebrated its
seventy-fifth anniversary in 2005). It was Laskin who taught
her kiln-fired enameling.
In 1985 Simon began her metal education “in earnest.”
She embarked on a mentorship with metals master Robert
Ebendorf, who was teaching at the Y. “That’s when I learned
what it meant to live the life of an artist and to be a jeweler,”
she recalls. At that time, Ebendorf was teaching at the State
University of New York at New Paltz. A number of his graduate
students taught with him in Manhattan. Simon took classes
with Lisa Gralnick, Jamie Bennett and Pat Flynn, among others.
Ebendorf did more than guide Simon in her jewelry.
He showed her work around and introduced her to people in
the field. He also helped jump-start her career as a writer,
albeit inadvertently. When Simon shared her criticism of an
essay written about Ebendorf ’s work for a show of his jewelry
at Artwear, he forwarded it to the writer Mark Leach, then
curator at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Leach admired her forthright critique and ended up acquiring
one of her necklaces for the museum.
Simon continued to write and eventually landed a regular
spot with Metalsmith Magazine (she also served on its editorial
advisory committee for several years), contributing book
and exhibition reviews and profiles of contemporary jewelers.
Over the past decade-plus, this experience has benefited her
work. Visits with jewelers like Pat Flynn and Sharon Church
have led to greater knowledge of technique. “I’m going into
studios and asking, ‘How did you make this?’ ” she recounts
with wonder.
The connection between the writing and the work is direct.
“The vocabulary of art criticism, how you talk about your
work, how you justify the decisions that you make—it’s not
until I started writing about other artists that I think my jewelry
began to go in a more sophisticated direction,” she states.
For thirty years Simon worked in the basement of her
home in Highland Park, eventually taking over the entire
space. Despite its spatial limitations—she could not raise her
arms over her head—the situation allowed her to be with
her children (“I was always there when they came home from
school,” she notes).
In 2004 after teaching for two months at the Penland
School of Crafts, Simon returned to New Jersey and vowed to
move above ground. Relocating to Philadelphia, she found
a loft space in a newly rehabbed factory in Center City. The
eleven-by-forty-foot studio features plenty of light, thanks
to a wall of windows. Among her tools are a hydraulic press,
an enameling kiln, a six-inch belt sander (a gift from her
husband), and a scroll saw, which she uses to cut Plexiglas.
A dressmaker’s dummy helps Simon see what something
will look like on the body; and she uses an IV pole on wheels
for her flex shaft.
The centerpiece of the space, so to speak, is a heavy duty
plumber’s bench with big pipe legs and a shelf underneath
for storing tools. Simon has also carved out a niche for writing
and for her substantial library of reference books. A cabinet
for enamels is on her wish list, but overall she is very happy
with these improved working conditions.
While some jewelers can sit down at the bench with an idea
and realize it in metal, Simon almost always makes paper
models as part of her design process, an approach she learned
from Ebendorf. She finds that the physical act of manipulating
materials three dimensionally stirs the design impulses in
a way drawing alone does not. “Heavy paper behaves quite like
metal—you can score it and fold it,” she explains, although
it cannot be stretched. This model-making also relates to an
interest in origami and kirigami (folded and cut paper).
BLUE PEONY BROOCH ofs t e r l i n g s i l ve r ; acetate,7.6 x 7.6 centimeters, 2008Photograph by RalphGabriner.
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Simon has started keeping records of the models, which
she uses to highlight the design process in her classes and
workshops. “It helps the students to understand that there’s a
reason for doing that preliminary work,” she explains. For
one, design problems can be worked out. And in the end, the
metalsmith does not slavishly reproduce the model. “It’s not
like all your creativity is gone,” she states.
Another lesson from Ebendorf: “Make fifteen and choose
your best eight.” This approach, in a manner of speaking, “gets
you off the hook of thinking every little thing is so precious,”
Simon notes. “There are going to be some pieces that are
better than others; you might as well have something to
choose from,” she adds.
Simon enjoys commissions, counting them among the
most meaningful of her design work as they often carry a
personal connection. A friend studying papermaking in
Burma, for example, purchased beads expressly for the jeweler
to create something from them for her. After researching
Burmese textile patterns, Simon created an elaborate necklace
with matching earrings. “She thinks about me when she wears
it,” Simon notes, taking visible pleasure from this connection.
Among her favorite commissions are wedding rings. “To
me, that is such a responsibility: to be asked to contribute
something that someone wants to wear for the rest of her or
his life.” A commissioned piece sometimes leads to new work.
A sea urchin necklace designed for a client led to a series of
ornaments featuring this motif.
When Simon gives a talk about her work, she tells her
audience she became a jeweler because she loves the creative
process. After thirty-five years of being active in the field,
however, her true passion lies in the intimacy of designing
something that will be placed on a body, against skin. “It took
me a long time to articulate that sense of the intimate and
what it means to me,” she reflects.
Casting an eye over the field today, Simon points to what
she perceives to be “a resurgence in beauty” in the best of
American and European jewelry—“as opposed to modernist,
constructivist, abstract,” she explains. She also has noticed
increased use of non-precious materials in jewelry. She recently
saw Neoteric Matter: New Studio Jewelry, at the Long Beach
Island Foundation of Arts and Sciences in Loveladies, New
Jersey, that featured new materials like silicone and
computer-assisted designs.
Simon has attended a number of national fairs, including
the Smithsonian Craft Show, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Craft Show and Washington Craft Show. She has never had
to make a living from the marketplace. “That’s very different
from having to put out a production line,” she notes. She
admires the sense of community at the shows: “As I’m talking
to you, I can hear the sound of people putting up their booths,”
she relates. That sense of community is “what it’s all about,”
Simon avers, “because it’s a hell of a way to make a living.”
Simon feels blessed to be where she is in her life and craft.
“I’m so grateful that I get to spend my days at my bench, to
write about somebody else and to be a cheerleader for jewelry
and for craft, and to teach,” she says. Hers is a full life, with
plenty of flowers to inspire.
SUGGESTED READING
500 Earrings (juror: Alan Revere). Asheville, NC: Lark Books, 2007.500 Necklaces (juror: Marjorie Schick). Asheville, NC: Lark Books, 2006.McCreight, Tim. Color on Metal. Guild Publishing, 2001: 52-53.——. The Metalsmith’s Book of Boxes and Lockets. Hand Books Press, 1999: 6.Price, Beverly. “ ‘The Self As Work’—a Review of Marjorie Simon’s Enamelled
Jewellery,” Enamel (British Society of Enamellers newsletter), Winter 2006.Simon, Marjorie. “Anything Goes: An Insider’s View of American Enamels,”
presentation from the British Society of Enamellers Symposium, 2006 (available online).
Szorad, Felicia. Review of “Botanica” exhibition. Metalsmith Magazine,Volume 24, No. 5 (Fall 2004): 48.
BLUE AGAVE BROOCH AND DETAIL, of sterling silver, alteredphotograph, pearls, acetate, acrylic, 10.5 x 4.5 centimeters,2008. Photographs by Ken Yanoviak.